A cruel court ordeal, but justice demands it

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The right to challenge robustly accounts of sexual abuse is all the more necessary in the post-Savile firestorm

Courts are alarming places: formal, adversarial, stern. Giving evidence as a victim of assault is daunting and humiliating, in cases of sexual assault doubly so. If you were a child when it happened it must drill painfully into deep embarrassments and insecurities. Sexual predators, after all, notably pick on children who are vulnerable to start with. To be publicly and intimately questioned about disgusting memories, with the implicit scepticism of a cross-examination, adds to that vulnerability.

And, as the barrister Helena Kennedy, QC, sadly remarked, even if the perpetrator is convicted victims do not always find relief: “Criminal processes do